Cheerful Abundance

a field notebook of suburban life

We Rock at Crafts

As a generally non-craft-doing person, I am just tickled with myself over these.

Even though they cost us a fortune to make, I am so thrilled with how our valentines turned out! I am calling this a win – not only were the valentines inventive and sweet, and did not involve distributing candy, but because the kids will be in a new school next year for Kindergarten, we can replicate them next year as well, for the cost of a few packs of dollar store foil pencils. And they were definitely a hit among the preschool set. And my kids loved giving them out. I am so, so grateful to Pauline Grayson, the genius behind Sweet Muffin Suite, who came up with these and was generous enough to share the idea and the PDF with her readers. I love generous, creative people! We ended up tinkering with the original design, by adding in a digital signature each child wrote herself (because there was no way at their age they could sign as many as we had to give out), and we tweaked the colours, because I am a fussy baby who can’t be near yellow or I break out in a rash, and also, I like oceany colours, and pinks.Why yes, I am hard to live with – but what prompted you to ask?

With the self-healing cutting mats and good X-acto knives, these were a snap to finish. We did 60 in less than an hour, and that included the ridiculous amount of time I spent matching the pencil ‘shaft’ to the arrow colour. Pink and gold was pretty hot looking, and Martha-approved. I can’t even get over myself and the amount of self-backpatting I am doing over these, but when Pinterest makes me think other women, better mothers, do this stuff every day with their kids, I can feel myself going down the road of mental comparisons, and that is a race this lady is never going to win.

Are you sick of reading about my Great Valentine Crafting Adventures? Never fear, I only do it to spare you the pain we call Still Owning Our Old Home While Living In Our New Home. Our old home that isn’t on the market yet, and it has been 6 months. Our old home that sucks the money out of my bank account so fast that it leaves me breathless. Our old home that just driving near makes me start hyperventilating with money stress. When we drive past the street that was our old turn-off to the old neighbourhood, the kids always start chanting, “no, no, NOOOOO” in unison in the back seat. None of us want to go back there! Next week we meet with a realtor and get this show started, and this morning, I ordered a St. Joseph from Amazon to bury near the ‘for sale’ sign, because it can’t hurt, right?